Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Classical Capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th Centuries CE)

Water management in ancient civilizations included symbolical rituals of purification. The authors focus on the Nat Yekan sacred water tank in the Bagan area, and trace interesting parallels with similar Shivaist water reservoirs known in Kbal Spean, Kulen Hills area northeast of Angkor.

They assert that said reservoir ​“may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing downslope, into the city’s peri-urban zone. Indeed, we believe that Nat Yekan’s iconographic elements served a similar purpose as the imagery found in association with the intricately carved river beds along the Stung Kbal Spean River (…) Here, water was made to flow over and around a series of Shaivite symbols (see Boulbet 1979; Chevance 2005; Feneley et al. 2016; Hendrickson 2011; Jacques and Dumont 1999; Tan 2014), many of which – such as carved linga – are clearly tied to notions of fertility. These symbolically charged water management nodes, and the extensive water storage and redistribution system of which they were part, celebrated the Angkor king’s role as guarantor of prosperity for the Khmer kingdom (Tawa 2001:141). Similar Hindu iconography is also associated with the river bed at the Sahasralinga pilgrimage site on the Shalmala River, in the Indian state of Karnataka.”